Author's gender affects the rating of academic articles: Evidence from an incentivized, deception-free laboratory experiment.

In this study we sought to verify the hypothesis that a researcher’s gender affects evaluation of his or her work, especially in fields in which women are a small minority. To this end we asked a sample of economics majors to rate papers written by mixed-gender couples, indicating that they were (co-) authored by a “female economist”, “male economist”, “young female economist” or “young male economist”. While the age factor played no role, female authors received lower ratings. This effect was independent of the subject's gender.